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Peripatetic Entrepreneur writes "At the Science Fiction World Convention in Montreal, Hugo Award winning author Charlie Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman opened the show with a 75-minute, wide-ranging conversation on stage. From flying cars to decoding the genome of the Pacific Ocean to vat-grown Long Pig, it's all there. Audio is also available — video soon."

It isn't intended for consumption. It's just that if some muscle grafts fail QC for internal use, you might as well fry it up. Plus, PETA has a reward out for "vat grown meat", but they didn't specify the species.

Human flesh that hasn't been abused for 30 years is probabally quite tasty. Or at least it smells pretty good when cooked by accident, so it might taste good when cooked on purpose.

If there's some reasoning behind this statement then I'd like to hear it (or even, to read it).

I have moderate grounds for concern about whether it'd be sensible to mass produce "Long Pig" ("Soylent Pink" to raise another popular SlashDot meme) ; whether my concerns are well-founded I'd leave to the biologists since fossils are more my area of expertise. I'd be concerned that any micro-organism that colonised the Long Pig vats successfully would also b

That's because the "financial meltdown" is an inherent property of the system... everyone sprints to the middle arena for the food and a bloody mess ensues when the food runs out. It doesn't need prediction because we already KNOW it is going to happen over and over and over again.

Yeah. Krugman tell also that the economic crisis is over. But it seems that this is just another bubble and when the governments spending will end, the economy will be hit hard. In the meantime, Krugman has his time of glory.

But things are getting worse, slowly. And it'll be ten years before people have the money once again like they did last year.

Anyone who hasn't realized that yet still hasn't grasped the *scope* of what just happened. Krugman doesn't have to predict anything: it's all there in black and red -- all that's needed is to read it. The banks are *all* insolvent. Consumers are insolvent. We've just poured in $11 Trillion dollars from the future, and it's barely helping. Just which direction does Cramer expect the L

neither did anyone investing in the market that lost any money. the ability to predict market crashes has little to do with predicting things over the long term. the market recovers and people move on. the real reason why predictions of the future are more often wrong than not is because people have a tendency to expect what they think is interesting [flying cars] rather than anything of practical use. if you want an accurate prediction make one that is the result of several small practical steps away from what exists now. for example; I predict that hybrid cars [or some offshoot of them] will make up a majority of cars within 50 years. not a very exciting prediction but it's probably more accurate than expecting flying cars any time soon.

actually, everyone who was in the market knew it was a bubble. the only thing they didn't know was when it would burst. everyone stays in hoping to cash out before it bursts. anyone who was predicting that housing wasn't a bubble was either lying or he is a charlatan.

you would think that if everyone knew it all was a bubble including the FED then there would e a lot more pitchforks and torches at the white-house right now to force a change in how things are done. no.. I suspect there are more people who do not understand how the economy works than those who do- even among economists. anyway, back to the topic- along the same lines I think that anyone that really has any understanding of history and technology knows that the future is going to e practical and mundane.

Similar things happened for the great depression which is why to some extent this depression didn't become "great" and has slowed down (doesn't mean that it is over or that the fall will be quite slow.)

The DIFFERENCE with this re-run? the PRESS and the CONGRESS WORKED TOGETHER to expose what was going on to the public which helped create the political will necessary to make meaningful changes; however, it was not enough to undo the newly created FED which helped create the whole mess in the 1st place as the

The FED created the bubble to reduce misery until what everyone was assuming was the next emerging technology boom -- biotech. It was supposed to blossom by 2010. The boom was severely hindered by government policies (oversubsidizing of basic research, hindering of steam-cell research, complete failure to recognize that terrorism's main target is stable society and treating it as a traditional military threat, etc.). Populations don't come out with pitchforks unless a very certain demographic exists -- l

Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy". Internet, housing, debt, whatever. While I was not around at the time, people have sincerely believed that things are truly DIFFERENT this time! during every bubble throughout history if you care to read it. And then made up some cock and bull story about knowing it all along, all the signs being obvious etc. after the bub

Re: lemmings; if you're a rational player in this economy what's the best thing to do? Follow the bubble like everyone else and cash out early. For most of the economic cycle the smart action and dumb action are the same.

Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy".

This is how most rational people knew this was a bubble. If this is the justification given, just calmly ask yourself the question: what has changed us as a specie? If you can't figure out the answer, look for ways to profit from the new bubble and for to figure out what will signal the end.

To fight this recession the Fed needsâ¦soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html [nytimes.com]
Krugman and the Keynesian economists don't predict economic downturns, they create them. They believe that "bad" money in the short term is better than "good" money and say that in the long term we are all dead.
Krugman's prize wasn't for being a good economist but for his mathematical model much like John Nash. Personally after reading Krugman the past two years I believe he

>>Personally after reading Krugman the past two years I believe he is also just as nuts.

Yeah, I've read a lot of his articles and have come to the same conclusion.

Not that Charlie Strauss is much better. His fiction, especially Accelerando, reads like he just made a list of all the memes he could come across on teh intarwebs, and crafts a loosely structured story around it.

Not that Charlie Strauss is much better. His fiction, especially Accelerando, reads like he just made a list of all the memes he could come across on teh intarwebs, and crafts a loosely structured story around it

He flat out admits that in the recording("short attention span" and "read the internet too much")

I don't read that as calling for a bubble, rather he is pointing out that Greenspan is trapped and must create another one to sustain the already inflated valuations. This implies that he's putting off a problem rather than dealing with it. Which does seem to be what subsequently happened.

I don't read that as calling for a bubble, rather he is pointing out that Greenspan is trapped and must create another one to sustain the already inflated valuations. This implies that he's putting off a problem rather than dealing with it. Which does seem to be what subsequently happened.

That's how I read it, too. Krugman continues in the same article:

Bear in mind also that government officials have a stake in accentuating the positive. The administration needs a recovery because, with deficits exploding, the only way it can justify that tax cut is by pretending that it was just what the economy needed. Mr. Greenspan needs one to avoid awkward questions about his own role in creating the stock market bubble.

Bush and Greenspan needed a bubble to sell their tax breaks. More recently, others

Guys, read it again. It wasn't a piece of policy advocacy, it was just economic analysis. What I said was that the only way the Fed could get traction would be if it could inflate a housing bubble. And that's just what happened.

"Bubble" in the mouth of Krugman and other "leftist" (where "leftist" means anyone not drinking the austrian economics kool aid) economists is a very, very dirty word. He can't possibly advocate it as a policy; he's just saying that it's "the only way it can justify that tax cut", by creating the illusion of recovery through another bubble.

I read that as a pretty open attack on Greenspan rather than any sort of advocacy. He's accusing Greenspan of trying to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble, as a way of trying to produce some fake normalcy by "curing" one bubble with a new one. And that's pretty much what happened.

Seriously? A +5 mod for a misquoted line in an article? Did you actually read this article?

The basic point [of the "double-dip" fearing economists such as Steven Roach] is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he [Greenspan] still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.

Reading those two paragraphs, you've interpreted it as Krugman calling for a housing bubble? Perhaps as some sort of Keynesian conspiracy to cause an economic downturn? Is English a second language for you?

He was pointing out back in September of 2007 (and perhaps earlier - I didn't check any further) that housing prices were far too high with respect to historical price-rent levels and that a reckoning was coming. You're right, he didn't predict the collapse - he just predicted the precursor and had been warning about the deregulation that turned it into a disaster.

I'm quoting WP but it would be easy to find other sources -- I studied that in highschool, so it's not exactly rocket science:

Monetarism today is mainly associated with the work of Milton Friedman, who was among the generation of economists to accept Keynesian economics and then criticize it on his own terms. Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote an influential book, Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960, and argued that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Friedman advocated a c

If wikipedia is good enough for you then that very same article you quoted from also says:

"There are also arguments which link monetarism and macroeconomics, and treat monetarism as a special case of Keynesian theory."

Monetarism is about using monetary policy to manipulate the economy. High rates to slow growth in booms and low rates to reduce busts. Keynesian is about using fiscal policy to manipulate the economy. Spend less/tax more to slow growth in the booms and spend more/tex less to reduce busts.

Yes, it couldn't have been the artificially low interest rates, which means they are increasing the monetary supply much more than they should, which caused the housing bubble (not to mention the NASDAQ bubble), its that darn "deregulation," which of course means different regulations and happened over the course of 3 decades.

Of course, Krugman actually advocated created a housing bubble in 2002.

Point of fact, Krugman always expresses this type of perverse opinion. It's not restricted to the article in question. Maybe it sounded like a "troll" to a couple of uninformed moderators, because his opinions are so bizarre, but you really can't make this stuff up. Go read a few of his articles.

The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist. He tireless argues for greater and greater interventions in the marketplace (that is, he's a statist) without taking into account the secondary effects of those interventions because that would contradict his world view. He's also very popular in Washington:-).

The difference is that Krugman changes his recommendations based on the political party of the politician backing the economic policies. There were economic policies that he supported when the Clinton Administration proposed them and opposed when the Bush Administration proposed them. If he had said that he used to support such policies but now realized that they were wrong, it would have been one thing, but he instead wrote as if he had always opposed such policies and only an idiot would support them.

That's a very fair point. I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters. This criticism is very well founded; generally things start out well, but inevitably things go wrong and the perpetrators end up blaming the free market for all the problems. There are of course examples and counter examples on both sides, so things are completely black/white, but as a general trend it rings true. While libertarian economists (to use a stereotype) are political in the sense that they look at the economic problems resulting from political issues, they tend to think that economic policy should be apolitical...that is, get politicians of all striped out of the money business. Krugman is the nemesis of that line of thinking.

Yes, this seems like a practical and realistic agenda to pursue. Best of luck with it.

Unfortunately the rest of us, stuck here in the real world, are trying to support and learn from people that are genuinely interested in putting out the fires of poor (de-)regulation and crass, self-interested tax-trickle-up policies.

Krugman is articulate and cogent regarding economic theory and practice, particularly for non-economists such as myself. I've been reading his articles for 8+ years, and his opinions do not se

"I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters."

But that's a political point of view right there. It's akin to saying that Sector X of the economy (where X in this case == banking) should be above the law. Why? Well... just because we say so! It's our axiom that GOVERNMENT == BAD and FINANCE == GOOD!

Both government and finance are means of social control - and neither come from Mars but both execute with the consent of the people, and as the means of implementing the people's will. It's also valid to say that finance should not control people's lives any more than government should.

Do libertarian economists warn against the dangers of financial speculation wasting resources and causing gross mismanagement? But they should, if they're going to be honest. Economists should be both apolitical and afinancial.

However, "libertarians" often seem to have a huge blind spot when it comes to money. They seem to think that money is a self-justifying power base which can do no wrong, unlike those evil Gubmint bureaucrats. But greed and power is greed and power no matter what the label on the suit.

Before getting a New York Times column Krugman was not overtly political, and used to praise some of the ideas Milton Friedman came up with, while also praising Keynes's ideas. Another thing is prior to the NY Times column, very importantly, Krugman was a mainstream, well respected economist. Not that I think that means much, but he was not some hack with no economic background like so many people spouting op-eds in the Wall Street Journal or CNBC.

Once he got the Times column, he began analyzing Bush's budgets and saying the numbers did not add up because they were wildly over-optimistic. This brought him into the political arena more.

Also - what mainstream economist does NOT argue for intervention in the economy? Milton Friedman who is supposed to be the free market guru supported a government/Fed run expansionary money policy. This is a capitalist economy, do the capitalists who run it and own it pay attention to any economists who don't advocate government control over at least money? The answer is no. In fact, the capitalists who run this capitalist economy were who advocated the bailout of the banks and all of this.

The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist.

Isn't that the purpose of an economist ? To spatter some figures and graphs and theories over whatever politics ? It doesn't come out of the blue, there's always an ideology behind it. There's no such thing as a "true" economy.

Well, we arrive at a point in economical research where it can begin to be called a science. Are scientists political when they say that creationism is just bullshit ? Krugman's models say that some policies are right and some are wrong. He offers an opportunity to discuss the model itself not just to yell "socialist ! " "fascist !" in place of conversation.

Of all the economists to go after for having poor "prognostication skills" you couldn't have picked anyone worse, except for maybe Nuriel Roubini. The fact is that Krugman called the bubble in at least May 2005 [nytimes.com], warned of disastrous consequences in August of that year [nytimes.com], and continued to do so all the way to when the shit hit the fan. From his August 8 2005 piece:

"If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession. That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble."

This is when Fox, CNBC, and the Fed were rah-rahing about how everything was fine and shouting down those who'd voice otherwise.

It was worse than even he suspected, as the bubble continued to grow [nytimes.com], he continued to point it out [nytimes.com]. For anyone who read his column and blog in the years leading up to this clusterfuck it was quite clear that Krugman had a very prescient and accurate prediction of the varied causes and effects of the chaos that would ensue along with numerous warnings not to let it happen. So the parent can shut his pie hole because he clearly hasn't read a word the man has written.

I invite anyone to Google and read Krugman's columns for yourself. Because this is insane backwards bullshit. The guy was crying his head off that this was going to happen.

Republicans make shit up and lie because the truth has a liberal bias. It is dangerous to the predominant reagan free marked propaganda that rules all the thinking in the US these days that liberals like Krugman has a much deeper and better understanding on how the economy works and improves than all those lazy rich daddy frat boys that makes up the republican party in the US. So they lie about anything and attack all people who try to use reason and look at the facts. And then their followers repeat those

People make up arguments like this to discredit sources who they disagree with but have the annoying habit of being right.

The thinking that tends to lead to making up this sort of thing is:1. I believe $BELIEF.2. $SOURCE demonstrates using all sorts of incontrovertible facts and logic that $BELIEF is completely wrong.3. If $BELIEF is so obviously completely wrong, than I'm an idiot.

Here's where the thought process starts to go wrong, thanks to cognitive dissonance:4. Since I'm not an idiot, $BELIEF is actua

1. I believe that climate change is a hoax2. Modern science and peer review demonstrates using all sorts of incontrovertible facts and logic that I am completely wrong3. If climate change is obviously not a hoax, then I'm an idiot4. Since I'm not an idiot, climate change is a hoax5. Since climate change is a hoax, modern science is either stupid or lying6. Al Gore and Big Environment want us to live in caves and spend all our money on smug energy efficient products

What? Krugman wrote "The Return of Depression Economics" in 2000. He has been saying something is fundamentally wrong with the world economy since then, while the median response by economists is that everything is fine, the free market has to take its course etc. Krugman has been throwing closer to the bullseye than most other mainstream economists.

Asking Paul Krugman what the future holds is like asking a blind person to reproduce the Mona Lisa with those big fat kindergarten crayons. That is something I would actually buy because it would help someone who needs it. On the other hand there is NOTHING about Krugman that I would buy.

he also claimed on numerous occasions that there was no oil speculation. He finally reversed himself earlier this summer when he acknowledged what those who track oil shipments already knew, that oil was sitting in tankers/storage but prices were high.

Nevertheless, if you've been following Krugman he's certainly not been an optimist about a lot of the aspects of economy leading up to the meltdown. Here's a pretty pessimistic article about housing prices from 8/2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com] Of course, at the time people accused him of being a pessimist.

CS: Good evening, weâ(TM)re very pleased to be here and thank you very much for inviting us to talk.

PK: Yeah, this is different for me, but it should be a lot of fun. â¦ (Set up problems) â¦ What do you really think the world is going to look like, say, 30 years from now?

CS: Ummm, thereâ(TM)s a very simple answer to that and a misleading one, I think, and the simple answer is unless we are really, really unlucky the world in about 30 years time is going to look more complex. By really, really unlucky â" nuclear war, major plagues or similar â" the world in 30 years time after that is going to look a lot simpler, though not a good way.

PK: Right. Obviously what Iâ(TM)m thinking about is the technology. Given my perspective â" I was thinking about his coming up â" and thinking that â" maybe it was just my age or something, but things donâ(TM)t seem to have changed as much in the last 30 years as myself as a sci-fi reader would have expected them to. And I donâ(TM)t know if Iâ(TM)m missing something â" kinda that perspective.

CS: I think things have changed a lot in the last 30 years, but not in the direction that somebody 30 years ago would have expected. The 20th Century, and going back to the 19th Century, the real visible vector of change technologically was transportation speeds. You go back to 1809 and to get across the English Home Counties, the areas around London, you go via stagecoach and it would take you a couple of days to cross them, it would cost you probably about a monthâ(TM)s wages and cause you considerable discomfort. 2009, it costs about the same amount of money, it takes about the same time and the same amount of discomfort to get from here to New Zealand. The whole world has shrunk to the scale of the English Home Counties in 1809 over about two centuries. At the same time weâ(TM)ve gotten used to performance improvements in speed. Thereâ(TM)s this weird sort of political thing in the early 20th Century called air-mindedness. Everybody knew that flight was going to be the next really important technological revolution. They were all trying to find ways of making money from it or using it to demonstrate how important and modern and with-it they were and how on the cutting edge they were â" sort of like computers today with politicians. Who will never pass up a photo-op with a computer even if they donâ(TM)t even know how to type. Now the whole air-mindedness thing, the problem we ran into was â¦ it was sigmoid curve â" we had a slow start, a very rapid period of improvements where we went at about 20 years from biplanes to supersonic jets. And then the curve stopped going up â" it flattened off. And the reason it flattened off is all to do with energy. To go much faster, you need more and more energy inputs. Itâ(TM)s not a linear input increase but virtually an exponential one. We hit a point at which chemical propulsion wouldnâ(TM)t send us any faster. And for a variety of reasons including both engineering and politics, nuclear power wasnâ(TM)t an acceptable answer. And airliners today are slower than they were 20 years ago. However, the big difference is that everyone and his dog flies today, whereas 20 years ago, or 40 years ago more accurately, thatâ(TM)s where the term jet-set came from, its because those were the people who could afford to fly long distances.

PK: And yet, let me press on. What I kind of expected. Let me show my age here. What you came out believing if you went to the New Yorkâ(TM)s World Fair in 1964 w

Krugman theorizes that the Third World could develop by providing long term stabilized individual and group labor contracts to multinational corporations. This has the chance to restore profitability and competitiveness while incentivizing labor through different reward systems, like food and shelter, since the money supply is so irrationally tightened in the wake of the AIG mess.

I don't think the future of entertainment will be so different than it is today, or even 500 years ago. The medium may change, but that's really about it. Humans like to be entertained, period. Here's an interesting new development in 'moderntainment';
http://us.dubli.com/The-New-York-Spygame__3_2913?gmt=-60 [dubli.com]
which I think could really indicate how people are starting to think about their space and entertainment, and how to make the most of something that even a few years ago was pretty much the preserve o

He'll come back to it sooner or later, I'm sure. It just might take him a while. I understand his problem with writing more... he's started with a beginning that promises a particular kind of ending, and it's hard to wrap your head around how he can get to that ending. That doesn't mean it's impossible, though, and I'll bet one day he'll come up with an answer...

I unfortunately missed the Friday Stross-Krugman panel (and look forward to seeing/hearing it online) but Krugman also did a solo second panel on Saturday, from science fiction to economics, that totally rocked. I hope that will also become available on the net. A recording of the panel should be recommended viewing for every English speaker just for the short section in that panel on how the map is not the territory. One of the better panels I've seen in a number of years, which showed the guy isn't just

He's right. There's a great book called "The Box", which is a history of modern shipping containers. Containerization reduced the cost of ocean shipping of manufactured goods by about 90%. Breakage and theft went way down, too.

A few decades ago, if you went down to the docks in New York or San Francisco, there were thousands of big guys lifting and carrying stuff. Not only did containers end that, they ended the ports of New York and San Francisco - both were replaced with new ports in New Jersey and Oakland. If you go to a container port today, you see very few people around.

The other big development that made international trade work was fax machines. With fax machines, you could send ordinary business paperwork to people far away. Even if they didn't speak your language, they could probably figure out a purchase order. So you could do the basics of commerce at a distance. This cut out many of the expensive middlemen in international trade. It used to be that to import something, you had to deal with an importer, who dealt with an exporter at the sending end, who dealt with the manufacturer, possibly with a wholesaler and a warehouse company somewhere in the chain. With fax machines and containers, you cut the deal with the manufacturer by fax, they filled a container, and the container came to you without any intermediaries who cared what was in the box.

Isn't all that horrible? Imagine the industry that would still exist in the USA without this - EPA-regulated industry and US labor protections instead of the 19th century smokestacks and Dickensian labor conditions of the Indias and Chinas of today...

The labor conditions in India and China during those days were *much* worse than today (ever heard of the "Great Leap Ahead"?). And without the box containers, there is absolutely no way the US ports could cope with the amount of international shipping.

I hope you realize my two arguments above didn't even start touching the cost advantage.